Wintergirls
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Series: ---
Publisher: Penguin Group
How Received: library
It's not nice when girls die.
"Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in fragile bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the thinnest. But then Cassie suffers the ultimate loss-her life-and Lia is left behind, haunted by her friend's memory and racked with guilt for not being able to help save her."
I kidnapped the B&N summary, because they did it better than I could.
Loved loved loved loved
loved loved loved loved
loved loved loved loved this book. (Possible contender for favorite book of 2009? We'll see.)
From the characters down to the writing style, Anderson delivers another flawless piece of literature. It's moving, it's quotable, it changes lives. I loved the plot, I loved the way she wrote it, I loved it all.
Favorite quotes?
Why? You want to know why?
Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and peels off, roll in coarse salt, then pull on long underwear woven from spun glass and razor wire. Over that goes your regular clothes, as long as they are tight.
Smoke gunpowder and go to school to jump through hoops, sit up and beg, and roll over on command. Listen to the whispers that curl into your head at night, calling you ugly and fat and stupid and bitch and whore and worst of all "a disappointment." Puke and starve and cut and drink because you don't want to feel any of this. Puke and starve and cut and drink because you need an anesthetic and it works. For a while. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by then it's too late because you are mainlining it now, straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can't stop.
Look in a mirror and find a ghost. Hear every heartbeat, scream that everysinglething is wrong with you.
"Why?" is the wrong question.
"Why not?"
People see the log and call it a twig. They yell at me because I can't see what they see. Nobody can explain to me why my eyes work different than theirs. Nobody can make it stop.
The merry-go-round spins again. To get off this thing I think I have to scream. But I can't. My bone corset is laced so tight, I can barely breathe.
I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.
Overall Rating & Final Comments: 10/10, in a heartbeat. It's a beautiful, gut wrenching novel.
~ Nicole